Sampson wrote:Do these have to be hosted by the country in which the table originates from?

No.

Sampson wrote:If not, wouldn't it be awesome if we hosted a WCS event? Could this be possible? I'm sure it would boost the game here in Britain.

It would be awesome.

The financial and organisational burden that comes in running one of these events would currently, in my opinion, overwhelm us. Far from boosting the game in this country, it would probably exhaust the few people who currently voluntarily put in their limited free time and effort to making this game just about tick along in the UK.

A new influx of skilled, enthusiastic and time-rich individuals to the game (probably a bunch of students, or recent graduates with no jobs thanks to the current climate) might change this. It's not happened yet...

Yeah, I appreciate the work, time and money going into it would be massive and would need a constant workforce behind it. Could we possibly get a grant/fundings from the government or other sources to help fund it?

I assume hosting a WCS event would also have to involve contacting manufacturers and corresponding foosball associations and asking them if we could host the event as we wouldn't want to upset anyone now would we!?
Has a WCS event been hosted before in a different country than its tables 'home'? How was it received by the table's home nation?

The WCS does not have to be in the Home country of the table, e.g. Garlando (IT) WCS has always been in Austria, this year's Tec-Ball WCS (DE) is in Netherlands, and Roberto-Sport WCS has been held in Switzerland (once run by the 'home' Italian federation, twice by the Swiss federation) albeit just over the border from Italy.

The only WCS we could bid for would be the Roberto-Sport event, however as it is not the most popular table in Britain we would be risking a lot if we did so, unless we could secure at least £10k in sponsorship, and have an army of volunteers to make it happen.

This has been discussed at Warwick on many occassions, normally when an enthusiastic new member brings up the possibility of hosting a Worlds event, and it normally gets shot down pretty quickly due to the reasons already mentioned.

I imagine that if we secured a WCS there would be quite a number of happy volunteers from unis and the foos scene in general, but not to help in the areas they would most be needed.

Unlike the tournaments we're used to in the UK, a WCS requires an enormous amount of preparation and initial financing. To add to this problem, we'd need help during the WCS organising the huge volume of players and tables from volunteers who probably wouldn't be taking part in the tournament itself. This is a lot to ask from anybody.

I have been looking seriously at the feasability of holding the Roberto WCS in the UK maybe in mid-late October at a Holiday camp out of season. However I wouldn't put the odds of it happening above 10%, unless we get at least 10k sponsorship and a large team of volunteers to make it happen.

It cost the Swiss around 25k Euros to put on last years, about double the prize fund, and about 25% more than entry fees. If the BFA were to lose that sort of money there would be no more BFA. With at least 50x tables, people would have to be paid to put them up and take them down, then there are things like security, spectator facilities, VIP/Press liaison, opening ceremonies etc to think about. It would effectively be a quantum leap in terms of any tournaments we have held in the past.

However, if we did put on a WCS it would boost our world rankings position as more UK players would pick up more points, and we could pick our strongest team in the Nations Cup.

Organize a WCS it is definetely heavy from many point of view, we have experienced this in Giubiasco the past two years, allthough as RS, for istance, we take care about shipping, installing and disassembling the tables.
An idea might be to start with a PRO TOUR. Also in that case you'd have all our support.
marco